If it seems really difficult and like his eyes get tired, you may want to have an exam by a pediatric developmental (or behavioral) optometrist who offers vision therapy. This thread has more info about that:

If it seems really difficult and like his eyes get tired, you may want to have an exam by a pediatric developmental (or behavioral) optometrist who offers vision therapy. This thread has more info about that:

And here's an article about my son's experience with it - I hadn't read this article in a while, and found some thing in it just now that I'd forgotten about. For instance, after the therapy, "He noticed how curiously large the print seemed in the fourth and fifth grade level books he had read before, and commented that they “don't have much in them.” And "Current research indicates that approximately 1 of every 4 children has learning related vision skill problems. The National Society for the Prevention of Blindness estimates that 10 million children in the United States have undiagnosed vision problems. Research also shows that 7 out of 10 juvenile delinquents have undiagnosed vision problems."

Of course, the fact that a child the age of yours is not readily reading yet doesn't mean that something's wrong - sometimes things just haven't come together yet, but it's just good to know that sometimes there are vision skill issues that are easily correctable.

I have to put in a plug for the ABeCeDarian program (www.abcdrp.com). It's inexpensive and very easy to use. My son is in public school but I bought the program because he was struggling. We are now almost finished with Level A and his reading has improved tremendously. We're using the program along with the I See Sam books (www.iseesam.com).

We hated 100 ez lessons too! My son is currently using Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading (only a couple of weeks into it though). We chose to start at a lesson a little further into the book, as it begins with letter sounds and such which he didn't need to learn. I borrowed it , but your library may have it (or it's cheap at amazon or homeschool classifieds used). We rotate it with these sentence strips to help with sight words: http://www.littlegiraffes.com/sentencepractice.html

I just write the new words on index cards (the new words are at the top of each page). We review the flashcards daily & he reads sentences daily too. I introduce new sentence sheets every couple of days now (but in the beginning, it was every week or 2). I used these when teaching my dd how to read too.

We also own Hooked on Phonics & Explode the Code. We aren't using them currently though (ETC has writing and my ds hates that, and I wanted to slow down from HOP and review more....thus OPGTR). We have also used readingeggs.com. They keep giving me free subscriptions for weeks - so it's been awesome! With my daughter I rotated headsprout.com & ETC books, but my ds needs something different.

Lastly, I love this blog where the mom only uses bob books to teach reading.

ETA - We also LOVE the leapfrog dvd's! The Letter Factory is great for teaching the sound each letter makes. The Talking Word Factory teaches how to blend those sounds to create simple CVC words and the silent "E". VERY good & entertaining!

see the Starfall website. Also, if you have younger kids, start them now. I recommend Glenn Doman's method (modified) and "Your Baby Can Read". I started my kids very young and I think it's great--just keep it fun for both of you

I looked at 100 lessons too, but I couldn't being myself to do it. That script... *shudder*. I also purchased, but did not use, Sing Spell Read and Write. Workbooks are not a favorite thing around here.

With my ds5, we've used Starfall, the Letter Factory and the Talking Words Factory dvds before he was reading. Those two things seemed to be all that ds needed to figure stuff out on his own.

When we began phonics instruction this past fall, we briefly tried Progressive Phonics, which is great, but ds needed more practice than these provided. We read Bob books, and we made books that were similar to Bob. We're also using Phonics Pathways. I feel just "eh" about this text. It's fairly systematic. It provides lots of practice. It's just not very interesting, and the font and layout drive. me. nuts. Who the heck was the book designer for this? We still use it though. It is cheap (although there is cheaper - Blend Phonics and Webster's Speller are free).

We supplement with a lot of games from the Florida Center for Reading Research. My ds loves these activities. And they are also free. We did many, many flashcard and manipulative-based games. That helped to make the drill and kill aspect of phonics practice actually fun. My ds really loves phonics and figuring out new rules.

I really like the Words Their Way approach for phonics and word study, but I hesitate to recommend it because it's not a parent-friendly text.

He is reading above grade level now (yesterday we were reading Curious George together, stuff like Arnold Lobel's books come easily to him now), but it's very apparent to me that he has some vision issues. We saw a developmental optometrist, but without a vision therapist in our county, his issues with tracking are probably going to slow down his progress. He just can't get very far reading independently (like by himself in his room) without fatigue. Anyway, I just wanted to chime in about the vision therapy.

I have to put in a plug for the ABeCeDarian program (www.abcdrp.com). It's inexpensive and very easy to use. My son is in public school but I bought the program because he was struggling. We are now almost finished with Level A and his reading has improved tremendously. We're using the program along with the I See Sam books (www.iseesam.com).

Me Too! Kayla just started B1, she is on the fourth group of I See Sam Books, and today was Very Proud at how good she has gotten. Keep in mind, I just started this stuff in December. Prior to that she was in ps, and the fourth from worst in her class. I tried to do stuff with her at home, but it was not progressing. I did spend some time working on phonemic awareness skills including sound segmenting and blending. I loved the reading reflex book for getting me started.

We got to lesson 50 in Teach your Child to Read in 100. . .then DD was done, she didn't like it. We transitioned to the Bob books which she loved and read the first and second sets over and over again. Now, we are reading Dr Seuss books and she's able to read most words herself (like Hop on Pop and The Foot Book, Fox and Socks, etc. . .). We have worked to lesson 120 in the Calvert Homeschool curriculum as well, but are now taking a break and just working on getting her more comfortable reading and doing math. So, now at home we do a math worksheet, she gets independent reading time to read whatever she wants for 20 minutes (usually the Bob books or another book she's already comfortable reading), and then she gets to pick whatever book (usually a Dr Seuss) to read to me. I did have her doing Starfall for a while, but she only wanted to click the pictures and wasn't learning any of the words in the books. My DS (5) is teaching himself to read using the Bob books (he knows all the letter sounds and he just sits down and figures out the words). He's much more interested in reading than DD. . .but I think as she's seeing him reading the books she still likes to read, she's wanting to read harder/longer books.

Barbara: an always learning SAHM of Ilana (11) and Aiden (8) living in Belgium with my amazing husband.

We also love the Letter Factory/Word Factory movies. We're also using the first set of Bob books right now. So far my son (nearly 5,) likes them, and you can't beat the price, around $10-12 a set.

The only thing I didn't like about the bob books is that they really take a jump between sets 2 and 3. While this doesn't seem to be a problem for most kids, my dd needed a slower progression. And I didn't find them very cheap. Comparatively, the first set of I See Sam books (24 books) were $20. I got them at http://3rsplus.com/ Keep in mind, my oldest dd would have been bored with them, as they do move slow and she caught on to reading very quickly.

Reading Reflex helped me to understand the learning to read process a bit better, and I really recommend it to parents. Dd2 did use it to learn to read a bit, but she is having a lot of fun with Progressive Phonics right now.

DH and I have had lots of discussions about teaching reading, and one thing we find most sources lack what we think should be included: 2 sound blends. There seems to be a big jump from phonetic awareness to 3 letter words. Beginning with one letter, then 2 letters, and working up to 3 letter words makes more sense to me.